Five-time Paralympian Alec Denys has been honoured with a national award in advance of National AccessAbility Week, which runs from May 31 to June 6.
Last Thursday (May 29), the 74-year-old Warsaw resident received the Trailblazer Award from the Abilities Centre, a charitable organization in Whitby that operates a 125,000-square-foot state-of-the-art and fully accessible centre offering sports, fitness, arts, and life skills.
The award is presented to a Canadian with a disability who has overcome systematic barriers to achieve a significant accomplishment that redefined how society perceives ability.
Denys suffered a life-altering injury in 1979 while bow hunting at a park north of Trenton. He had climbed a tree for a better vantage point when the branch he was sitting on broke. He fell eight feet to the ground, sustaining a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
The following year, he took up the sport of para archery, and went on to represent Canada at five Paralympic Games between 1984 and 2000, in New York, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, and Sydney.
He also set Canadian records in swimming and javelin, and enjoys cycling, wheelchair basketball, kayaking, skiing, sledge hockey, and wheelchair curling. The Wallaceburg native was inducted into that community’s sports hall of fame in 1994.
A member of the Peterborough Curling Club and the Peterborough Council for Persons with Disabilities, Denys has received other awards in recognition of his efforts to enhance the quality of life of people with disabilities as a mentor, volunteer, accessibility advocate, community leader, and champion for inclusive recreation.
In 2014, he received the City of Peterborough’s Holnbeck Award and was named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Club of Peterborough in 2017.
Denys was also Peterborough’s torch bearer for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games Torch Relay.
The Trailblazer Award from the Abilities Centre recognizes his personal achievements and the lasting difference he has made in the lives of others.
“The real measure of success isn’t the barriers we’ve overcome ourselves — it’s the barriers we’ve helped remove for others,” Denys said.
Along with Denys, the Abilities Centre also recognized Matisse Hamel-Nelis with the Accessible Moment of the Year Award, Tim Cordeiro of WeCandle with the Accessible Employer Award, Domenic Gentilini from Down Syndrome Foundation with the Community Champion Award, David W. Smith from Rockmount Medical Solutions Inc. with the President’s Award, and Scott Godfrey from Lacrossing Barriers with the Jim Flaherty Award.
